Nothing Sacred

call late Friday evening to meet Greg Richards at the Moore home. Ellen had identified her attacker, and the wealthy business-owner, charged with kidnapping and rape, was behind bars in Phoenix. With his heart full of gratitude, it was hard to believe there was still room for fear.

But David felt fear nonetheless. He went anyway. Because he cared too much not to be there when Greg told Martha and her kids the whole story.

Or at least the part of it that involved Ellen.

He hoped.

So far, that was all that had come out.

“Please let that be it,” he said as he turned the Explorer onto Martha’s street. “Don’t let anything else come out.”

Things will happen as they must.

“You said that if I need something, all I have to do is ask.”

That is so.

“Well, I’m asking.”

You will have what you need.

So why were his nerve endings buzzing with alarm?

THE FAMILY, along with Greg Richards, was gathered in the living room when David arrived. He approached the couch where Martha and Ellen were seated. Martha greeted him with a smile, Ellen with a quick hug. Shelley excused herself rudely and left the room. Tim and Rebecca both said a solemn hello. Rubbing Tim’s head on his way past, David gave Rebecca a reassuring grin. Having the sheriff in full uniform in the middle of their living room on a Friday night was understandably unsettling.

With an idea of what was coming—an idea Martha didn’t yet have—he suggested that perhaps the younger two kids could be excused and Martha could fill them in later.

Greg, saying he should’ve thought of that himself, agreed, and David was the recipient of two grateful smiles as the kids left.

Taking the same spot on the love seat he’d had that first uncomfortable day he’d been in this home, David looked around. He took in, again, the built-in bookshelf by the fireplace, the pictures all around. He recognized the people in them now.

“Let’s get this over with,” Greg said, sitting on the edge of the armchair Ellen had occupied during David’s first visit. Ellen and her mother were huddled together on the couch, Martha’s arm firmly around her daughter, Ellen’s blond head, with flat and lifeless hair, on her mother’s shoulder.

All eyes in the room were trained on the sheriff.

“First off, Ellen, thank you for your cooperation this afternoon. I know it was hard.”

With a jerk of her head, indicating that she hadn’t yet fully recovered from the experience, Ellen nodded.

“What’s going to happen to the bastard?” Martha’s voice was trembling. David could only imagine how hard it must have been on her that afternoon, too, coming face-to-face with the man who’d raped her daughter. “He’ll go to jail for life, I hope.”

Elbows on his knees, Greg rubbed his hands together. “That’s for the courts to decide,” he said. “Prosecution is going for kidnapping and rape, which could mean up to twenty-eight years.”

“I hear a but in your voice,” Martha said, her face white and pinched. Sitting back was one of the hardest things he’d done in a while, but David did so, running his hand along the leg of the black Dockers he’d worn all day. His white shirtsleeves were rolled up, the air cool on that early April evening, and still he was hot.

“Hear me out and you’ll understand,” Greg told her, his smile tired but kind. The man’s curly black hair was disheveled in places.

Knowing what the sheriff had likely uncovered that day, David could sympathize.

But only from a distance.

Life as he’d chosen it to be could very well hang in the balance during the next few minutes.

“For the past year, there’s been a prostitution ring running just outside of Shelter Valley.”

“What?” Martha frowned, gently stroking Ellen’s upper arm. “Prostitutes? In Shelter Valley?” She glanced over at David, as though he had something to do with it, or could’ve done something about it—after all, hadn’t he suggested as much?—and then back at Greg Richards. “How does this concern Ellen?”

“The ‘business,’ which is the most successful and long-running of its kind in the history of Arizona, has its home base in Phoenix.”